ex-l wrote: often what we might think is a "Maya", depression or some other kind of "nervous" condition can actually be changed by feeding the body, or removing food and drinks that the body is unhappy with
Interesting how Oxygen leads on to drug use! I was literally referring to getting active as a "post spiritual" therapy, especially where "spiritual" was sit, meditate, and cut off from your body.
Prana (sanskrit),
qi(Chinese),
pneuma (greek) and particularly for us - "
spiritus" (latin) are all words for spirit, but
all are actually words for "breath". What they all say is full life flow really is about breathing (inspiration : breathe in).
It is the other side of the same coin of ex-l's statement above. The "heady" orthodox Western therapies treat the "head' conditions as separate from the body. They would actually ignore a person's physical health or dietary regime and so on. The Eastern approach is to get the body back into balance first for the reasons' ex-l described. The energy flows are determined by the qualities of air and food etc - in through and out of the body, but the body also has to move well to help move them through.
The energy
has to flow. You cannot be pedantic about diet and thoughts, and not get your body to move the way nature meant it to.
joel wrote:All psychoactive drug use, including alcohol and tobacco is part of an individual's process of self-regulation
This kind of links up. Macrobiotics is a misunderstood concept. If understood, it really says that everyone is macrobiotic. That is, we all seek balance as we experience life in this universe. Anything we do (outward) or consume (inward) requires a balancing action or a balancing food.
Imbalance seeks balance, and drugs can be a source of balance, e.g. nicotine as a stimulant, alcohol as a sedative. The macrobiotic approach is to move away from the edges of the see-saw, to eat and do according to basics. If you do something extreme, you need to know how to balance that. If for example you want someone to give up or cut down on alcohol, which is essentially sugars, it becomes easier if the diet and activities change as well so that it is not required as a balancing agent.
But to back up Joel' s point: there is the story of the Shivapuri Baba (Swami Govindanath Bharati - 1826 - 1963 (!)) - born in Kerala, he travelled the world and met president Roosevelt and other heads of state (met Queen Victoria many times). In his later years, he settled in Nepal (location is important here). He was over 100 when developed cancer of the jaw.
His disciples insisted on medical care, he wanted to treat himself according to his own understandings, but they kept insisting. He said he would do it as long as he could treat himself if it failed. And (of course for the sake of the story) it failed. Using his knowledge of ayurveda and Yoga, he then took up smoking! and cured himself (it worked because he understood the cancer was a "cold" condition, and that smoking was a heater).
Which brings me back to my own mantra of the moment -
It ain't what you do or eat, it is WHAT ELSE you do or eat™ ... anything, no matter how "healthy" you consider it to be, can lead to imbalance.